I heard a story not to long ago where these pilots were flying fighter jets off the coast of England. They were hot-doggin it and flew under the “blade” zone of a compact windfarm over water. Due to the false returns, the military lost “site” of them until the resurfaced. Turns out that due to the windfarms, they were able to sneak in under the windmills. The new problem… how windfarms off the coast are impacting country security.

Windmills are the new thing… and yes, as meterologists, we will have to just work around the issue.

While I empthasize with your position, I must side with the windfarms on this issue.

I am not in the slightest way an “eco” or “green” advocate, because I find most of the movement to be either a) political, or b) hypocritical, serving the broader purposes of cleaner environments barely at all. But these wind farms represent second-generation power in its infancy. The relative infrequency of severe weather compared to the ongoing need for power, and the ongoing presence of wind, suggests to me that the meteorological community is going to have to work around this admittedly frustrating obstacle.

The proliferation of low-range radars is going to make a prohibition against placement within a given proximity nearly impossible to implement.

Do meterologists not have precisely the same problem with high-profile electrical towers, cell towers, or other high-profile/low cross-section obstacle? Or is it the density of mills within a farm that exacerbates the problem? Does the rotation of the blade(s) mitigate or militate the reflectivity issue? If so, it would seem to me that other regional radars could work in concert to, in effect, “negatively” triangulate around windfarms. Perhaps the combined reflections of multiple radars scanning around windfarm areas could be leveraged to eliminate extraneous or misleading echoes.